


Desperate Measures

by avidbeader



Series: Avidbeader's Sheith Quote Week 2017 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: M/M, Post-Season/Series 04, Sheith Quote Week, Sheith Quote Week 2017, Sheithquoteweek, liberal use of Pollux
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:15:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avidbeader/pseuds/avidbeader
Summary: An unlikely encounter leads to a rescue.Sheith Quote Week Day 2: "Your friend desperately wants to see you."





	Desperate Measures

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a hot mess and I may come back to it later on and try to expand/fix it. But for now, it's a story a day for Sheith Quote Week, good or bad.

 

 

Keith’s first brush with awareness was the murmur of conversation nearby. As his ears strained to pick up something, he began trying to assess and remember. He automatically took inventory: nothing missing, numbness in his left arm and leg that suggested recent healing by the Olkari, and a headache and parched mouth pointing to dehydration.

 

The conversation didn’t sound urgent or panicked. That was a good sign that either he hadn’t been seriously injured or the treatment had taken. That also pointed to the mission being successf--

 

_The mission! Shiro!_

 

Keith struggled to open his eyes and sit up, but someone put their hands on his shoulders and held him still. “Not yet! We need a few more minutes to finish with your leg. Please don’t move!”

 

He tried his best to hold still, but had to ask. “Shiro? Is Shiro okay?” His voice rasped and someone guided a drinking straw into his mouth.

 

“Here, you need this. The energy drain from that trap depleted you. Sip, slowly. We’ll send someone for Kolivan.”

 

He obeyed, blinking to bring the room into focus. The Olkari healer, Morrell, was doing something with his ankle while his assistant helped Keith drink.

 

Kolivan entered and Keith pushed himself up. “What happened? Is Shiro all right?”

 

He nodded. “He’s with the princess and Coran right now. They ran him through a healing pod and he debriefed with the other paladins. I believe they’re trying to get him to eat and drink something--” Kolivan looked pointedly at the drink in the assistant's hand and Keith grabbed it and gulped it down. “But he desperately wants to see you.” The Galra paused briefly, as if remembering something, before continuing. “Now that I have confirmed that you will make a full recovery, I will send for him.”

 

The assistant patted his arm and put a fresh drink pouch in his hand. “Two more for now. But you’ll need to stay in bed and rest for another day and drink lots of fluids.”

 

Keith glared at that, but Morrell gave him a sharp swat on his good leg. “Behave yourself. You may have only brushed against the force field, but it was still enough to wither your arm and leg everywhere it touched. It’s a good thing the Blades have made us their principal healers--they don’t have the resources for injuries like this. An Altean pod might have saved your life but I don’t think it would have restored the damaged tissue.”

 

“Keith!”

 

He barely had time to register Shiro’s entrance before arms engulfed him, pulling him up and into a solid, broad chest. Keith slid his own arms around Shiro and clung to him, pressing his ear against Shiro’s sternum so he could hear his heartbeat. He could feel the tightness in his own chest, the burning in his eyes. And then he felt Shiro’s hand in his hair, stroking his head, and Keith lost his fight, tears spilling down his cheeks.

 

“Shiro, I am so sorry! I should have known, I should have kept trying--”

 

Shiro pulled back just enough to tilt Keith’s gaze up. “You… You have nothing to apologize for. Do you hear me? _Nothing._ The others told me how you kept searching for months before coming across that copy. How you stepped up and led the team. How you tried to get me back where you thought I belonged.” He paused and trailed his flesh hand down Keith’s face. “Are you hearing what I’m saying? You never gave up on me. All the blame goes to the people who created that clone and manipulated you all.”

 

Keith shuddered, remembering Lance’s description of the moment that the clone’s programming had triggered. How Lotor had walked into the meeting room and the Shiro they thought they knew had attacked, injuring the prince badly and almost killing Allura as she intervened.

 

He would never tell anyone how grateful he was that he had been on a separate investigation with the Blades that day. That it had been Lance’s fingers on the trigger of his bayard that took the imposter down.

 

Shiro wrapped both arms around him again. “Not your fault. And the minute you all realized what had happened, you all started searching again.”

 

“I still can’t believe we found you because Pidge was sharing fairy tales with a child…”

 

<> <> <> <> <>

 

_Pidge had been annoyed at first that the youngest daughter of the Polluxian royal court was following her around and asking questions. But little Princess Romelle was happy to talk about some of the technology that these Galteans had developed over the millennia, managing to stay under Zarkon’s radar with increasingly powerful planetary cloaking._

 

_Until she and Hunk had found a scanner designed to find Altean energy signatures, repaired it, and boosted it just for the challenge. And struck gold with the location of Pollux._

 

_Now Allura was taking the first delicate diplomatic steps with Prince Avok, the ruler in all but name. The queen had died some years before and King Coba was on life support. Avok and his brother Bandor split the duties between them and left Romelle to her doting Nanny._

 

_Pidge noticed Avok giving the mice a side-eye as they rode on Allura’s shoulders. She chuckled and pointed to them. “So Disney, Allura having her little court of animals.”_

 

_“What’s Disney? Is it a planet?”_

 

_Pidge laughed again. “No, it’s a company back on my home planet that specializes in entertainment. They put out a lot of fairy tales and other stories, full of adventure and princesses and magic. I loved them when I was younger than you.”_

 

_Romelle’s sky-blue eyes lit up and she leaned into Pidge’s side. “Ooh, tell me one of their stories?”_

 

_“Umm…. okay, there was one about a beautiful princess with an evil stepmother who was super, super jealous of how pretty she was…”_

 

 _Pidge got into the retelling of Snow White, playing up the princess’ cooperative animal friends and agreeably swapping the poisoned apple for a poisoned_ chelina _fruit when they got to that point. And then when Pidge finished describing the glass coffin the dwarves had built, Romelle squealed in delight._

 

_“Oh, we have a prince like that! He’s all black and white and sleeping behind glass. I’m forbidden from going into the room--Bandor says it’s dangerous--but I’ve looked in from the door.”_

 

_Even if Green hadn’t suddenly started nudging at her, Pidge would have been paying close attention. Fighting a suddenly pounding heart, she asked, “That sounds amazing! What’s he like?”_

 

_“He’s very tall and he’s got a nice face except there’s a line across it right here…” Romelle traced a path across her nose. “But his hair is black and white and so’s his armor! Bandor says he’s a pa-la-din, but I call him the sleeping prince.”_

 

_“You know, our Princess Allura spent a very long time sleeping like that. Do you know how long your prince has been sleeping?”_

 

_Romelle shook her head. “I know he was here before my last birthday, and that was a long time now. But I don’t know how long before that.”_

 

_“Can you show me? I’d love to see him.”_

 

_“Sure!”_

 

_Romelle had led Pidge down into the lower levels of the palace, through areas that looked like science labs, and to an arched open doorway. “Don’t go in!”_

 

_“I won’t,” Pidge assured her. She stepped forward and pulled up the scanners in her vambrace. She inhaled sharply at the readings of multiple energy barriers in the room. She looked across at what they were guarding and gasped._

 

_It looked like Shiro, in his armor but missing his helmet. Suddenly Pidge wished for her own helmet so she could transfer what she was seeing to Hunk, who was on monitor duty in the castle._

 

_“He’s handsome, isn’t he?” Romelle was also looking across at the cryo-pod._

 

_“He is. Thank you for showing me.” Pidge made one more slow, careful sweep with her vambrace and followed Romelle back upstairs. She had to find the others and fast._

 

<> <> <> <> <>

 

The team wasted no time, coming at the situation on several fronts. Allura and Coran worked on Bandor and Avok with a flood of questions about everything to do with Pollux, discovering a pattern of the brothers attempting to play both sides of any situation. The other paladins summoned Keith to re-bond with the Black Lion, who immediately awoke and roared confirmation of Shiro’s presence on the planet. As Lance distracted the princes by pretending to fly into a jealous rage over Bandor’s flirting with Allura, Kolivan and Keith led a team of Blades and Pidge to break into the lab and free Shiro.

 

The one thing wrong with the plan was not knowing about a second layer of deadly force fields designed to activate the moment the pod holding Shiro was deactivated, keeping him and whoever had opened the pod trapped within.

 

Pidge disabled the trap in twenty ticks, but it was twenty ticks of Keith holding a limp and disoriented Shiro away from the barrier while the deadly energy worked its way in through his suit, draining his quintessence and atrophying the limbs that had made contact with it. Once the barrier was down, a pair of Blades had taken Shiro out while Kolivan carried Keith. Everyone had converged on the castle, where a team of Olkari healers waited to help the Blades, and Allura had taken them through a wormhole to put several star systems’ worth of distance between them and Pollux.

 

<> <> <> <> <>

 

Kolivan watched from the doorway as the two of them continued to talk in low voices, not letting each other go. The two Olkari worked around Shiro, making a final check that they had gotten every bit of deterioration out of Keith's body. Keith kept touching Shiro’s face and hands, as if assuring himself that he was real. Shiro pushed Keith to continue drinking to rehydrate himself, popping the straw of the third pouch into his mouth mid-sentence and earning a glare for it.

 

Morell stepped back and nodded. “All right, you’ll do. But you have to rest for the next quintant and give your body time to recover fully. Do I have your promise, Blade?”

 

Before Keith could answer, Shiro scooped him up. “I’ll make sure he stays in bed.”

 

“Shiro!”

 

“What? You obviously have a lot to tell me and you can do it from the comfort of your own room.” He spun and paused, seeing Kolivan looking at them. “Er, if that’s all right with you?”

 

Kolivan stepped to the side. “It is. I expect you are the one person who will be able to keep him there.”

 

Keith’s embarrassed protests and Shiro’s laughter echoed back to Kolivan as he watched them go.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone, Cryopcds did it again! Please check out [the edit she did for this story](https://goodtohaveyouback.tumblr.com/post/170205422716/i-still-cant-believe-we-found-you-because-pidge). It's so good. And now I have to come back and expand this story just so I can narrate that scene.


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